Burnside bounces back with oligarchs

As a training ground for a career in the brutal and suspicious world of post-Soviet business, the enmity of hardline Northern Irish politics is hard to beat. That is the path trodden by David Burnside, a steely former Ulster Unionist MP turned public relations man who has emerged as a key bridgehead between Russian interests and the Conservatives.

The cigar-loving 62-year old from Ballymoney was revealed to have taken a group of prominent Russians, including a close ally of Vladimir Putin, to the 2013 Conservative summer fundraising party and introduced them to David Cameron.

Since losing his South Antrim parliamentary seat in 2005, he has built up a client list that has included a foundation run by a Ukrainian gas and chemicals oligarch wanted by the US for bribery, a Russian chemicals billionaire seeking a British passport and the Moscow International Financial Centre, a Putin-led initiative to boost the attractiveness of Russia’s markets to foreign investors.

I’d quibble with one aspect of the Guardian piece . If “hardline Northern Ireland politics was a” good training ground for the brutal and suspicious world of post-Soviet business” wouldn’t the Assembly be full of millionaires?